3. Anomaly
Two guards entered the girl's room. "Come with us."
The girl eyed the guns meaningfully, but said nothing, following them.
Inside the main room of the ARC, the small girl marveled at the Anomaly Detection Device. "Interila." She breathed.
Lester rolled his eyes. "Please."
She smiled and turned to him. "Sorry. It's just…" She looked back at the machine. "Interila."
"Meaning?"
She smiled again. "I think your word would be 'incredible.'"
Lester rolled his eyes. "It would be like one glorified tin can to notice another glorified tin can."
She looked at him, confused. "I'm… sorry, that… doesn't make sense. There's only a few ways those words could be used together…" She paused, and then something clicked, and a smile crossed her face. "You… You think I'm a… a…" She started to laugh, unable to take it anymore. "You think I'm a ROBOT?"
"I wouldn't put it past you." He replied.
She grinned. "I'm not a robot. I'm… Human. Sort of."
"Sort of?" Cutter asked. The guards behind the girl looked uneasy, and one of them pressed their gun closer to her. She rolled her eyes.
"Can you PLEASE tell those idiots that I'm not going to hurt anyone?" She asked, pointing at the guards behind her with her thumb. "They're annoying."
"Maybe, if you tell me what you meant when you said 'sort of.'" Lester replied.
She thought about it for a moment. "I'm… Human, just not in your exact terms. I'm from your future, where everyone is like me."
Lester nodded towards the guards, and they backed off, if only a little.
"Thank you." She said, smiling.
"Don't mention it." Lester replied. "Now, what do you mean by everyone?"
She smiled. "That's not clear? What? Am I not talking English here?"
Lester rolled his eyes. "I was asking if everyone had that." He pointed to the pattern on her face. "And could manipulate technology like you."
"Well…" She thought about it for a moment. "Yes and no. The patterns are different on everyone. They're what you would call a birthmark, so to speak. Everyone's different. And everyone had a different technology they can manipulate. It's… Complex, to say the least."
"And… What?" Cutter asked, joining the conversation. "You're just… born with the ability to do that?"
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. We ARE still human, you know. In a sense." She shook her head. "No. It's an implant. Everyone gets it. It's placed in here." She traced the pattern on her eye. "And where ever else we have one of these." She pulled her long-sleeved shirt's sleeve up her arm until another blue mark showed. Like the one right under her eye, it was just a simple circle. "We're born with it, and then the implants are put in it. It's a good thing and a bad thing, though."
"How?"
The girl rolled her eyes. "We can get into the complexities of that later. It'd take a long time, which you don't have."
Everyone looked confused.
The girl counted down slowly and quietly. "Five…Four…Three… Two…And One."
An alarm went off as the ADD detected an Anomaly. The girl smiled. She walked over to it. "Told you."
She read the coordinates, concentrated for a moment, and then the smile disappeared, and she paled.
"Not. Good." She whispered.
"Step away from that! That's government property!" Lester commanded. One of the guards came forward and pointedly pushed her in the back with his gun. She ignored them both, her fingers tapping the keys.
"Step away now." The guard ordered. The girl looked at him, and then turned her head back to the screen.
It was hard to tell what happened next. One moment, the girl was staring at the screen, and the next, she was staring at the screen with a ball of crumpled metal on the floor, and the guard who had been behind her was in a hole in the wall. Those with sharper eyes had caught her movements. She was like lightning. She had whirled around, grabbing the gun, and pushing the guard into the wall behind her. Then, she had crumpled the gun into a large metal ball and turned to the screen again.
"I don't have time for games." She said quietly, coldly.
The other guard came up behind her as quickly as he could, and slapped handcuffs on her wrists.
"You said you wouldn't hurt anyone." Lester said harshly.
The girl rolled her eyes. A quick blast of electricity blazed on the handcuffs, and they snapped. "Not if they don't try to hurt me."
There was silence, and then Connor said, "Ok, you have to admit that was cool."
The girl smiled. "You're talking to a girl who fights Predators everyday so she doesn't get eaten. I think I might have picked up a few things in my fourteen years."
"So… you're fourteen?" Lester asked.
The girl rolled her eyes. "YOU HAVE AN ANOMALY ALERT! MOVE ALREADY!" She slapped her hand to her forehead.
"There's already a team on it." Lester said, calm for once.
She rolled her eyes. "Well that won't do any good." She started to head for the exit, but two nervous-looking guards blocked her path. She glared at them with cold eyes.
"I'm afraid you can't do anything either." Lester told the girl.
The girl had a dangerously calm face. "Tell me, Lester. Do you have ANY idea how much paperwork there will be if I get out?" She asked.
Lester just looked at her.
"Now. There would be a whole lot more paperwork if I accidentally hurt someone on my way out." She glared. "Wouldn't there?"
He looked into her eyes.
She stepped towards him. "Lester, have you ever seen an angry Florlic?"
He looked at her. "What?"
Her eyes were cold. "You don't want to see one, that's what. Trust me on that one. And they will trash whole cities to get to me."
Lester stared into her eyes. "Why?"
She smiled coldly, and it sent chills down Lester's spine, though he would never show it. "Because they're mine." She said simply.
She looked at everyone around her, and then walked towards the guards again.
"Hold it!" Lester called.
She turned to face him.
He sighed. "There's still paperwork if I let you out. I'll need a name."
She half-smiled. "I'm never saying my name again." She looked down. "It's interesting, isn't it? Anywhere else the first word I learnt would be the most important one. I don't think it's any different here." She paused, and then looked at him. "Anomaly. My name is Anomaly."
